This time of year, when the snow is off the ground but not much is growing yet, the feedboxes in the barn are a popular hangout.

The winter babies are learning to eat hay. I don't know if they particularly like it, but they're learning.


Like mother, like daughter: Sparky with Hickory.


The babies mouth the hay and delicately eat it, but at this age they vastly prefer mama's milk.




When I do the morning feeding, the babies eye me warily. To them, we're strange two-footed cows.



As you can see on this little guy, the dehorning scars are healing nicely.


The cows aren't the only ones who hang around the feedboxes.


It's no wonder we often find eggs in here.


Just a little snapshot of early spring around the homestead.

Saturday afternoon as I was starting some early outside chores, I happened to notice little Hickory nursing off Amy.


Let me repeat this: Hickory, who is Sparky's calf, was nursing off Amy, who (at the moment) didn't have a calf.


It's not unusual for calves to "double dip" from other willing cows, but this took on the air of absolute gorging. Greedy Hickory nursed and nursed and nursed, while Amy just stood there and took it.


After a while, Amy laid down, and Hickory still tried to figure out how to get the good stuff.



Then Amy stood up. Then she laid down. Then she gave low moos. And half an hour later, Hickory was still sucking down the milk.


So I clipped Amy's halter to a lead rope, and I tucked her into the barn, which was set with soft bedding and fresh hay. Inside the house, I told Don, "I'm about 75% sure Amy is in early labor."

A couple hours later, near evening, I said, "Since nothing's happening, maybe I'll go ahead and let Amy out of the barn."

"Don't bother," he told me. "You'd just be tucking her back in within an hour."

He was right, but since Amy didn't have any water, I filled a bucket and brought it into her pen; and saw...


She had dropped that calf literally 30 seconds before I walked in. "Not wasting any time!" I gasped, as I dashed into the house to grab my camera (which I had foolishly left behind). "Good call!" said Don, referencing my concern about tucking Amy into the barn in case she was in early labor.

The amniotic sac was still around the baby's head, so Amy got to work removing it.



The weather was chilly but not the bitter, bitter cold we had over the last week (-6F in the mornings), so I'm glad Amy held off until things improved.


I couldn't take many more photos since it was getting so dark in the barn, but I was able to determine Amy's calf was a little boy, and he wobbled to his feet and got his first drink of colostrum (what Hickory didn't suck down first, ha ha) in due time.

Today's weather has been beyond hideous. We've had blizzard conditions: howling wind, blowing snow, drifts closing our driveway and the road, etc. If ever I've been glad to have shelter for the animals, it's days like this. Amy is rather bored, alone in the pen, but at least she and her baby are sheltered from the elements.


Here's the view from the pen. What's not terribly visible are the sheets of sideways-blowing snow. Yowza it's been a wild day.



This little guy (so far unnamed) is Calf #3 out of 5. We can only hope the two remaining cows choose more decent weather to birth their babies...but if not, we'll be vigilant.

For the last few days, we've had cold, clear, sunny weather.


When we took Mr. Darcy for his walks, he could chase sticks and romp around on bare, snow-free ground.




But all that was about to change, in a big way. We had weather moving in.



We're pretty much perpetually battened down this time of year, of course, though we did lay in a bit more firewood for the occasion.


The biggest advantage during snow dumps like this is -- we don't have to go anywhere. We just stay home. What a blessing.

It was fascinating, yesterday afternoon, to watch the clear blue sky gradually get blotted out by incoming clouds.


Below the high cirrus clouds, everything was thickening up on the horizon.



Even the sunset managed to look vaguely ominous, if picturesque.



When we woke up this morning, Valentine's Day, the world was transformed. Here are some before and after photos.

Before:


After:


Before:


After:


Before:


After:


The new calves, Hickory and Ferdinand, don't mind the snow at all.



(It helps they have a nice cozy barn to curl up in.)


We're keeping a sharp eye on the other cows with regards to calving. I believe Polly is next -- it looks like she's starting to bag up -- and since we're expecting about a week of nasty, unsettled weather, I'll pull her into the barn at the first sign. At least with Jerseys, it's easy to predict imminent birth a few days in advance.

Happy Valentine's Day!

If there's one thing we prefer to do with our heifers, it's dehorn them. We've had cows with horns, and believe me, life is much easier without them. We usually don't bother dehorning the steers since they invariably have a date with the freezer when they're about two years old, and our philosophy is: Why waste a perfectly good dehorning on a steer?

But heifers become cows, and cows are generally with us for a long time, so we find it's best if they don't have horns with which they push others (including us) around.

We use dehorning paste. Another thing we learned (the hard way) is dehorning paste has a shelf life. Always look at the expiration date. We needed fresh paste this year, and at the feed store I noticed they had some paste expiring in 2018, and the rest in 2020. Guess which I picked up.



The first thing we needed to do was get Sparky and Hickory inside the barn, where we could separate out the calf into a smaller pen. In the absence of farm hands (i.e. our daughters), Don and I parked the vehicles to form a funnel toward the barn door. It worked.


Then we assembled our dehorning kit: Hair clippers, Vaseline, Popsicle sticks, dehorning paste, duct tape, and a light (it's quite dark in the pen). The hair clippers are to shave away the hair over the horn buds; the Vaseline is to draw a circle around the buds to corral the paste; the Popsicle stick is used to apply the paste and keep it off our hands; and the duct tape is to keep the paste from getting on the mother, either her tongue (from licking at the calf) or her udder (when the calf nurses).


There is a fairly small window of opportunity for using dehorning paste on calves. It's best used when the baby is between three and ten days old, and the little horn buds can be felt under the skin. One time we were going to dehorn a calf, but for the life of us we couldn't feel her horn buds; so rather than risk applying the paste and damaging her skull, we waited a few more days until the buds could be felt.

Here's the light we used to illuminate the pen where we worked. A friend gave us two of these lights. They're very bright -- 500 lumens -- and can be propped up or hung up. Very nice to have.


Both of us had our hands way too full to take photos of the actual dehorning procedure (if you're interested, we have an ebooklet on the process here), but it went fine even with Sparky bellowing at us nonstop right outside the pen. Distressed cows are LOUD.

As soon as Hickory's head was wrapped with duct tape, we released her to her mama, who instantly calmed down.


Many calves understandably fight the duct tape, but this little girl was very calm the whole time it was on.


We left Sparky and Hickory in the barn all day until late afternoon, at which point we separated the calf once more and clipped away the duct tape (this takes about 30 seconds). Then we released both mama and baby back outside.

What I like about dehorning paste is it's both aesthetic and painless (at least, if the calf's behavior is anything to go by). As soon as Hickory was released from the barn, she was galloping and skipping around in typical baby high spirits -- and we can look forward to a cow who will never develop horns.


Since we're keeping little Ferdinand as a bull, we'll also be dehorning him in the next few days as well.